Posted by Skelly Doctrine
a resident of Old Palo Alto
on Mar 19, 2013 at 11:19 am

The district decided which groups and others heard about it and asked to be allowed to participate. There was no public process and no transparency into who was selected to participate in focus groups and why. There was no public notification, no application, no selection criteria. If Skelly wanted you included you were invited. If you got wind of it and complained about being excluded then you could be allowed in. This is what it means to have broken governance, no transparency, and a focus on spin. It means if you are an insider who will make the district look good then you get a ticket to the focus group. If you are not, then who needs you? And if you don't like it, run for school board. LOL.

Posted by classified
a resident of East Palo Alto
on Mar 19, 2013 at 11:16 pm

Is it possible that classified survey is a copy of teachers survey?
Example-question about development? FYI - Staff developmental days are non working (non pay) days for me.

Top of survey page:
2013 Strategic Plan - PAUSD Classified Staff Survey
1. Overall Satisfaction
Thank you for your participation in this survey. This survey is for all classified staff in PAUSD.

Survey question sample, below. I removed response area to better fit here. Each line is a question. Possible responses are: Very Satisfied/Somewhat Satisfied/Somewhat Unsatisfied/Very unsatisfied/ N/A or Don't Know.

*2. Staff Development and Recruitment: How satisfied are you with the following?

Quality of teachers in your school
Quality of teachers throughout PAUSD
Your school administrators this year
District administrators this year
Your school's counselors this year
PAUSD ability to attract top teaching talent
PAUSD ability to retain top teaching talent
PAUSD ability to professionally develop teachers

*3. Budget and Infrastructure: How satisfied are you with the following?

Your school's classroom facilities this year
Your school's non-classroom facilities (e.g., athletic facilities, performance spaces) this year
Your school's number and quality of non-teacher human resources (e.g., aides, counselors) this year
The district's use of funds/budget this year

Posted by village fool
a resident of another community
on Mar 21, 2013 at 3:43 pmvillage fool is a registered user.

The following is an open address to Ken Dauber. I wish I could have Edmund Burke or Eileen 1 edit.

Dear Mr. Dauber,
I am writing to call upon you to form a Shadow PAUSD Board.
I do not know you. You recently posted here - calling for an independent investigation. Seems that it is not about to happen.
I think you have everything necessary to lead a Shadow board - heart, basic common sense and integrity. In no way I am undervaluing your academic achievements and titles. It seems to me that you are trying to promote basic village values. “Village” as in: It takes a village to raise a child.
My suggestions as to goals of Shadow PAUSD Board, bearing in mind that it is not Enron (as one commenter noted), but a public education system:

Short term goals of Shadow PAUSD Board: Investigate. Document. I am suggesting to call for input about incidents from the past decade. Reasons for the suggested long time frame:
1. Trust is easy to lose, extremely hard to gain. Given the fear of retaliation that was mentioned many times - hopefully graduates, or parents of graduates, will come forward. Hopefully trust can be rebuilt, slowly.
2. If past incidents were real - quite possible that some of those responsible are still around. Many of the staff members work decades in PAUSD.
3. Find out where and why the previous Strategic Plan failed to outline the process flows indicated by the recent OCR investigation. The excellent editorial initiating this discussion mentioned systemic issues. Such issues should have been noted by the previous Strategic Plan.
4. Try to figure out how the future Strategic plan will address these issues. A classified employee quoted part of the current survey, above. I do hope this input is not correct. In any case - survey questions are very important.
5. Maybe past employees will come forward? Those who retired? If their trust or support can be gained, it may impact others.
6. Hopefully current employees will come forward, and not only teaching staff. Many of us know that secretaries, for example, often are the most knowledgeable about the organization. I'm hoping for insight that could be gained if all levels of district employees were to come forward.
7. Possibly you'll find out that there is nothing to worry about. That would be a very important outcome as well to the many concerns posted lately.

Long term goals of Shadow PAUSD board: Many. A good start may be investigating the possibility that the current type of governance is not suitable to the current local culture. It is quite possible that this board model was set when there really was a village, prior to Corporate America culture taking over.